The present invention relates to cocoa butter substitutes which are suitable for preparing chocolate with tempering. More particularly, the present invention relates to cocoa butter substitutes made of sal fat which is derived from sal seeds or the seeds of Shorea robusta.
Sal fat is one of the fats generally categorized as Borneo tallow type fats and it is extracted from the seeds of Shorea robusta, a naturally occurring tree in the tropics.
Sal fat is liable to be hydrolyzed in the tissues of sal seeds by the action of enzymes present therein. Hot and high humidity climate conditions continue for several months after the sal seeds fall off the tree in the tropics, and those ambient conditions may also accelerate the hydrolysis of fat in the tissues.
The acid value of the crude sal fat extracted from the seeds just after they fall off the tree is 3 to 4, the acid value of crude sal fat extracted from the seeds four months after they fall off the tree is 12 to 16, and the an acid value of crude sal fat extracted from the seeds ten months after they fall off the tree is usually larger than twenty. But the acid value of crude sal fat, once it has been isolated from the tissues of the seeds by extraction, does not increase very rapidly during storage. Therefore, in order to obtain crude sal fat of low acid value, or low extent of hydrolysis, the fat should be isolated from the tissues of the seeds just after the seeds fall off the tree without any delay. But it is impossible to gather most of the seeds just after they fall off the tree and also it seems to be difficult to subject the seeds to the extraction just after they have been gathered, because of lower numbers of workers and inconvenient transportation in the districts where the seeds of Shorea robusta are produced. Therefore, the level of hydrolysis of available crude sal fat varies depending on the storage conditions of the seeds.